Incorrect answer. Each such service monitors different blacklists and blocklists and some only monitor one or the other. It is important to monitor a cross-section of these lists which takes an understanding of which services provide which type of screening and which ones should be used together to give you the most comprehensive picture of your sender reputation in real time. Monitoring several of these services takes time and effort but is very important. (We offer a multiple Black/Blocklist Monitoring service and can do this for you!)

Incorrect answer. Many state laws regulating “spam” require public domain registration. (Ask us about our Spam Law Compliance Audit and consulting services.)

Incorrect answer. Various state laws governing spam require that recipients have given express permission to each and every sender to contact them by email. These laws hold that an “opt-in” is not transferable even if the subscriber agreed to receive partner or referral offers on the website they originally subscribed to. However, the federal CAN-SPAM Act does not require an opt-in which is widely misunderstood. What it requires is a compliant means of opting-out and prompt action to honor the opt-out request. Certain state laws do require a compliant opt-in. (Ask us about our Spam Law Compliance Audit and consulting services.)

Incorrect answer. You should never use a no-reply email address as your “from” or “reply-to” email address in an email marketing campaign. This violates certain states’ spam laws and is also a trigger for spam filtering by the recipient’s ISP or email host. The same is true of “role” addresses such as “sales@” or “info@”. (Ask us about our Best Practices Audit.)

Incorrect answer. Various state laws around the country hold anyone involved with an email campaign sent to recipients in the state or from a server in that state responsible for compliance. This may include ESPs, list brokers & owners, agencies, consultants and client senders. These laws hold that you cannot off-load your legal responsibility to another party even if you only fit within one of these roles. (Ask us about our Spam Law Compliance Audit and consulting services.)

Incorrect answer. Around 38 states have their own laws governing spam originating from a server in their state or received by individuals who reside in their state. The legal requirements for what must be included on an email template and where certain required elements must be positioned on the template differ between many of these states making compliance challenging. (We can help you design a universally compliant template! And ask us about our Best Practices Audit and our Spam Law Compliance Audit and consulting services. And ask us about our Best Practices Audit and our Spam Law Compliance Audit and consulting services.)

Incorrect answer. The rule-of-thumb for several years has been to go for a high text-to-graphics ratio with the logic being that your campaign is more likely to be routed to the spam folder if its make-up is mostly images (photos, graphics). Because of the high percentage of emails being opened on mobile devices today, and the evolution of wearable devices, this trend is changing. (Ask us about our Best Practices Audit)

Incorrect answer. All email lists should be re-validated at least quarterly if not prior to every broadcast. Email addresses churn between 2%-3% a month and too many hard bounces may lead to sender reputation issues, aggressive spam filtering, and blocking and blacklisting. Even worse, inactive email addresses are often taken over by ISPs and spam monitoring organizations and are used as “honeypots”, a form of spam trap. When you email to spam trap email addresses, your sender reputation can become severely and even irrevocably damaged including your domain name! (Ask us about our Best Practices Audit and consulting.)

Incorrect answer. Spam traps are typically employed by spam monitoring organizations like Spamhaus.org or by ISPs as a means to catch spammers. If you send emails to a list with multiple spam traps on it (email addresses created only to catch spammers), this indicates to them that you are using an illegally harvested list or purchased list without a genuine opt-in since the organization maintaining the spam trap never opted in to anything. Spam Traps on a list can literally kill your sender reputation including both the IP-Addresses you send from AND your coveted domain name. (Ask us about “Safe send”, our Spam Trap screening & cleaning service, and our Best Practices Audit!)

Incorrect answer. A “Deliverable” rate is merely a calculation of total sent less hard & soft bounces. It has nothing to do with the number of emails that reach the inbox. The only reliable way to benchmark the percentage of emails reaching the inbox rather than the spam folder is to seed your list with email addresses you maintain at the leading Webmail or ISP email hosts. These must be monitored following each email broadcast to determine what emails made it to the inbox so a reliable inbox delivery estimate can be determined. (Or we can do this for you! We monitor a minimum of 30 ISPS and Webmail Hosts!)